by Marata Eros
Knives, on the other hand, are nice and quiet. Gloves mean there’s no easy way to trace to the assailant.
I blink long and hard, squeezing my eyes shut as long as I dare. Thinking about weaponry is a safe distraction from what's just happened. I needed it.
The simple thoughts regurgitating inside my mind calms me.
When my breathing is finally under control, I say, “He was the wrong bad man.”
My periphery catches sight of Calem turning his head, studying me in profile as I steadfastly maintain my speed. I'm not worried about being found quickly. I changed my license plates ten minutes ago. I have an entire billfold of plates inside the trunk. Thank God Calem is a cooperative boy and didn't melt down into a puddle of incoherent babble and delay our escape at Gasworks Park.
“I didn't know there were wrong bad men, Miss Candi.”
Put like that, my remark is nonsensical. I try to think of an explanation that makes sense to a seven-year-old.
Squinting, I'm happy to note that I'm going in the opposite direction of the commuters, leaving Seattle at a time when people are returning from the suburb communities of Redmond, Kent, and Bellevue.
Taking a deep breath, I explain a little further. “I think that bad man was an enemy of another club.”
“Club?”
I give his little face a swift glance, see the pucker between his brows, and sigh.
“Remember when I said there are guys who like to ride bikes and not live by the law?”
“Uh-huh,” he admits cautiously.
“Well, there are different kinds of clubs.”
I pass Sea-Tac Airport to the west of I-5. Using the middle lane and hanging on to the double-nickel speed limit, I watch for the 167 cut-off coming up after the hill and around the curve of multi-lane I-5.
“What kind was he?” Calem asks.
“He's with Road Kill MC.”
“Like dead animals?”
I bark a laugh. Out of the mouths of babes. “No, honey, actually, I think their club stands more for the amount of road they can travel on with their bikes. Distance.” I'm well-versed on all the clubs of the region. The rival MCs, both Chaos and Road Kill, have bad blood that goes back a long way.
As far as the feds are concerned, Road Kill MC always comes up clean. We're very sure they're running guns, but we've not been able to prove it.
That’s not the case with Chaos, though. Right now, our man on the inside is playing president of Chaos. His road name is Mover. Some say he's playing dirty.
Meanwhile, my brother’s playing at being a rider.
Trouble is, we think the prez has gone rogue.
Puck hasn't, though, even after years of being deep undercover. He doesn't like that trafficking underage flesh is now resurfacing after female trafficking had been successfully shut down just a year or so ago.
Every minute they know about each other's roles within Chaos MC, the room for error grows.
It's not a matter of if Puck will be revealed as an undercover cop, but when Mover will give Puck up.
I can't let that happen. But Puck's as stubborn as I am. He won't quit until the last perv is marked and imprisoned.
This was the last of them associated with this ring. Puck's right. We're circling the ring leader like sharks scenting blood.
Puck and I would retire together. He's not getting any younger. And though he calls me “baby sister,” that’s a misnomer. We're Irish twins, just a year apart.
“Do you think they kill animals on the road?” Calem asks, breaking into my thoughts while still sounding uncertain about what “Road Kill” means in the context of bikers.
I shake my head, slapping my blinker down with my index finger. The red light is glaring as it pulses inside the tight quarters of my compact car. Smoothly blending with merging traffic, I take I-405 heading east. Southcenter Mall looms to my right as I monitor cars, slowing my Scion. “No, I think those guys are all about riding their bikes.” I risk a glance at his face. “Hey.”
“Yeah?” Calem answers quietly, shifting his rear on the passenger seat.
Shouldn't be in the front where the air bag is, I think guiltily. Damn.
“You did well back there, honey.”
His little fingers curl around the front of the seat, and he leans toward the console that separates our seats. “I was scared. He was gonna beat you up with a rope.”
True. The sad part is that incident is not the worst Calem's seen in his young life.
Calem is an orphan.
His mom was a crack whore, his daddy a pimp. He was an easy trafficking mark. He'd caught a streak of luck for a time because the mother had a younger sister who wasn't a user, whore, or otherwise a dysfunctional mess.
Madison took him in, where they lived in a great school district in Kent, and enrolled him at Martin Sortun. The aunt probably sacrificed a lot of social life for little Calem. Madison won't have to worry about that anymore, though.
Because she's dead.
She was a millennial. Rode her bike to work every day. Then one morning, she shot out between two buses.
The third one couldn't stop in time and sent Madison's body flying twenty feet. I saw the photos of her body lying on smooth black asphalt like a broken doll. With Calem's aunt dead, his one hope gone, he was immediately tagged as a candidate for perv central. Little kids with no mommy or daddy are automatic picks.
Some people might say I'm unnecessarily thorough—detached even.
Why would I need to know about Road Kill MC, when Chaos Riders is the intermediary in the trafficking?
Because knowing what seemed unimportant has saved my ass more times than I can count. Like today. What if I'd been unaware about the clubs? I was suspicious from second one because I saw the rival's name on his cut.
What happened to the biker from Chaos I was supposed to meet?
I wonder.
“Miss Candi?” he asks in a quiet voice, startling me from my deep thoughts just before I miss the cut-off to the armpit cities of Kent and Renton.
Tapping the indicator again, I sweep right, finally on 167 then say softly,
“He didn't beat me up with a rope, though, did he?”
A genuine grin spreads his cheeks, revealing two missing front teeth. “Nope. You kicked his ass!” Calem covers his mouth with a hand, eyes wide.
“I'll let that swear word go this time, Calem,” I say in mock reprimand.
The kid's been through too much for me to correct him. Besides, my adrenaline-soaked system has about had it.
I've never done this before—brought a kid home.
Never had to. Self-chastisement creeps in.
Slowly, so slowly, I reach my free hand across the center console and flip my hand over, palm up.
He slips his hand into mine, and I dare to hope that we'll still get Calem to safety. That I'll figure out why the wrong club was there. That I’ll connect with my brother and make sure he's okay.
Fear thrills through me.
Puck believes the handoff happened. He's going to end up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
There's no way he can know things went crazy. Without letting go of Calem's hand, I accelerate—tempting fate—to get home and find out if my brother just landed in a trap.
*
Puck
Candi should've phoned by now.
I can set my watch by my sister. She’s always been the more responsible one between the two of us.
Even when she couldn't afford to be.
I steel myself against the bad memories of our childhood, which threaten to rise like a toxic oil slick in my mind.
Usually, I'm fucking better than this.
But hearing that vacant tone in her voice over the cell dredged up all the shit.
All the shit we swore we'd never talk about.
I look down at the bobbing bleached-blonde head of the sweet butt who's going over my cock with smooth pulls and swallows. She works my tool like a champ.
Just ca
n't stay hard, though.
Cocks aren't good actors. If I'm thinking deeply fucked-up things, that takes the hard out of the on.
I’d hoped letting Kristie suck me off would take the edge off the feeling I've got. The feeling that bad shit's going to go down.
But even though I have a great view of her tight ass and she’s got a mouth with suction like a Hoover, I can't make it happen.
I’m worried about my sister. The handoff.
The kid—as always.
Candi and I are this close to realizing our dream of leaving the life and getting out from under the fucking hamster wheel that's deep undercover law enforcement.
God damn.
To complicate our lives further, I told Candi my suspicions about Mover. He's dirty. He's feeb, and I'm a cop. The two don't mix.
No one does the shit he does, even deep undercover, and continue to uphold the law. I feel like I'm waiting for him to drop the hammer. On me.
On Candi.
She's the first female FBI spearheading the takedown of a child sex trafficking for an entire region.
Kristie stops sucking with a release and smacking pop of lips.
My prick falls over on my bare thigh like a dead flesh tree.
Resting back on her bare heels, she huffs.
“What the fuck is this?” she sweeps her palm toward my uninspired junk.
Yeah. Well, see, here's the thing: my sister and I are essentially cops protecting kids against sexual predators.
And you're fucking all the snakes in the nest, sister.
Yup, that's probably most of it. Instead, I say with halting authenticity, “Don't know. Sometimes I'm not in the mood.”
“Since when?” Kristie pouts her full lips. That mouth's been on more cocks than I can shake a stick at.
My eyes run over her body, and there's plenty to see, since the “dress” she's wearing is like a strategically placed Band-Aid of sheer pale-blue material, currently hiked up to her waist.
She leans back all the way. Stretching out her legs in front of her, Kristie plants her palms on the floor of the room I keep here at the club, opening her legs and giving me the full pantyless show.
Long hair that’s been dyed blonde so many times, it's more like straw sweeps the floor as she arches, the pink folds of her pussy spreading to reveal her wet center.
Not all chicks get turned on sucking a man off. Kristie does.
God, she's hot. No doubt.
Right now, I'm just too in my brain to think about sex.
And that's saying something.
I'm known for having an on-command boner. I can get it up twice an hour. And at straight up thirty-eight, that's bragging rights.
That's when my sister isn't doing a handoff or when I've heard from her at the time I anticipate.
Ignoring the view, I stand, stuffing my uncooperative limp dick inside my pants with a hike, and zip up.
“Ahh,” Kristie whines.
I roll my eyes. “Nothinʼ personal.”
Or maybe it's all personal. I feel the scowl form. “I gotta move.” My tone says, “Don't fuck with me on this.”
Kristie's not a smart girl.
“But I was hoping we'd fuck,” she whines and stands in full view of the club hall beyond my open door, not bothering to pull down the skirt, baring her slit and landing strip of dark hair that proves her not-natural-blonde status to all comers.
A brother walks by, takes a look at her parts on display, and cracks up.
Kristie flips him off.
“Been there, done that!” He laughs, hiking his pants, and saunters off.
“Fucker,” she mutters.
I can't stand it. Normally, I try to stay in character, but sometimes, like now, my soul gets in the fucking way of my Academy Award performance.
“Straighten your skirt, Kristie.”
“Fine.” With an exaggerated sigh, she jerks down the hem of the skin-tight scrap of shimmering material, and it just skims the bottom of her ass cheeks. Her chipped screaming-scarlet nail polish contrasts with the blue fabric.
I'm suddenly weary. Tired of the charade of being a rider. Tired of three years on the detail.
First, we got rid of Ned, the fucking female flesh trader. Then we found out that the tide had turned to kids instead of women.
I was so pleased that somehow, Allen Fitzgerald's house “accidentally” burned down. Still, the evidence of his interest in prepubescent females had been duly noted, leading us to the new ring Candi and I were now unofficially working together. But only we know that. Because she's more than a sister. She's my best friend, someone who survived our childhood by my side. We don't keep secrets.
Couldn't. Not if we wanted to live.
When the similarities of the cases we were each working collided, we knew that we were actually playing against each other. So now we work together.
A handful of people within the Road Kill MC know who I really am, but they won't give me up, unlike the one man who could do serious damage. I suspect he has passed to the other side already.
Mover. Road name only. I still don't know his real name.
Kristie runs her fingers down my bare arm, jutting a hip out. “When do you wanna hook up again?”
I don't jerk my arm away, but now the lips she just had on my cock seem filthy instead of hot.
This entire job is souring.
I need to get out and take Candi with me. There's never a chance of us finding anybody to spend our lives with and having a normal existence if we can't get off this never-ending Ferris wheel of the horror of humanity.
I drop my arm, and the gesture causes Kristie to release her grip.
“I don't know. Got shit to do. We'll hook up again when we do.”
Anger washes over her features, showing the mean streak that hovers right underneath the surface of so many of the washed-up sweet butts. They want to be property, but the reality is, when every rider has ridden them, nobody really wants to make them permanent. They never see it, though. And… the cycle continues. It's sad.
It's reality.
“All the bitches say you're all stallion in the sack. What sack? You can't even get it up.”
Words fill my mouth. Every one of them is unkind, biting, honest, and superior.
I don't need this shit.
But looking into her hurt, overly made-up face, I can't bring myself to add another wound to the many that others have already put there before me.
I'll just be less for saying all the shitty things I want to.
And I've always wanted to be more. So instead of responding, I turn in the opposite direction. Brushing by her through my open doorway, I walk out of the club, heading for the trunk at the back of my fat boy.
I'll call Candi's landline, let it ring once, then hang up. She’ll know it's me. She has a Vonage line, so she can take the same number anywhere in the world and the number presents as though she's in the same US residence regardless of location.
She should be home now.
We haven't seen each other in three years. Can't risk showing up.
I promised her that I'd never come to her house or do anything else that would compromise her cover.
I don't break promises. Especially to her.
After extracting my cell, I tap out the number from memory, knowing she's already dumped the burner we spoke on earlier.
It rings once.
I tap End Call. Then I wait.
Ten minutes tick by as I look out over the deep woods guarding the Chaos Riders’ clubhouse.
A vein in my forehead begins to throb, keeping rhythm to my thudding heartbeats.
I slip the cell back into my trunk, lock it up, then hop on my ride. I’m about to break a promise to my sister for the first time in my life.
Chapter 5
Viper
“How long?” I ask Doc.
He holds up two fingers.
“Two mofo months?” Noose says, incredulous. Stubborn fucker is grinding his teeth through
the pain.
Sure enough, he’s got a dislocated kneecap. Must hurt like hell. Probably hurts his pride more.
“I can't ride?” he nearly yells.
“What about fucking?” Storm asks, one eyebrow rising to his hairline.
I swipe a palm over my face, tired to the bone.
“Don't worry about my cock or me sticking it in Rose. Got it?” Noose's glare is mercury fire on Storm, who's not known to be the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to delicate deliveries.
He's more the hammer-between-the-eyes type.
Storm rolls his large shoulders into a shrug. “Just saying…”
“Don't,” Noose seethes from between his teeth.
Where's Wring when we need him? He usually moderates all this bullshit.
“Okay, okay—I think whether Noose can fuck or not is the least of the worries on this one, Storm.”
“Don't think he'll need additional surgery, but he'll have to do physical therapy. And it was not easy getting this thing straightened out. Had to call in a favor. I'm just a general. Like Angel's eyeball? Had to call in a favor on that one too. Specialist job.”
I'd been there. Her mom, Beth, needed some work too. What a disaster that was.
Kinda like this is shaping up to be.
“Yeah, what Vipe said.” Noose glares at Storm.
I pierce Noose with my eyes, letting him know in no uncertain terms that Storm isn't the one to be blaming. “Listen, things went south fast on this.”
“No shit.” Storm snorts. “Lots of civvie eyes on the whole thing.”
“Took us an hour to extract ourselves, all the time Noose is dying.”
Noose's brows drop low over his eyes. “I was not dying.”
“You weren't feeling that great,” I clarify.
Noose is silent.
I briskly change subjects. “I'm going to go after Arlington. Storm will help. I'll think about taking a third brother.”
“Wring,” Noose says instantly. “He'll do best with a woman.”
What he means is he'll flinch less.
“Snare isn't going to be okay with it. Protected sissy too much.” Noose chuckles.
Storm whistles. “Better not let him hear you call her that.”
